Superconducting devices have been developed based upon high temperature superconducting (HTc) materials which may have critical temperatures Tc above 77 K, facilitating their use in cryogenic systems cooled by liquid nitrogen. In certain various applications, such as use in superconducting fault current limiters (SCFCL), high temperature superconducting materials are fabricated upon substrates that present multiple processing challenges. Because HTc materials are complex layered oxides, their growth on substrates such as silicon or metal tapes presents materials and fabrication incompatibilities due to differing thermal properties between superconductor material and substrate, as well as incompatibility of silicon and commonly used tape metal elements with high temperature superconductivity. In addition relatively thick layers of HTc material (>2 um) are often desirable to provide a target current capability (e.g., >300 A in 1 cm width tape), which may lead to stress and cracking in the HTc layer due to thermal expension coefficient (TEC) mismatch between HTc material and substrate when grown at high temperature. For example, when an HTc layer is deposited on a Si substrate, stress induced cracking can already be observed in ReBCO material of thickness greater than 0.5 um. Moreover, a high degree of c-axis preferred orientation of an HTc layer is often needed to meet device requirements, which may be difficult to achieve in thick layers grown on heterogeneous substrates such as silicon or steel. The patterning of HTc layers to form desired device structures such as current-carrying lines presents another set of challenges due to the need to etch a complex layer stack of materials used to form the HTc device. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present improvements are needed.